New Orleans strip-club crackdown days before Mardi Gras in French Quarter
Thinking back to the 14th century, we found the advent of erotic dancing or stripping in the Middle East, in the art form of belly dancing. Not a thread of clothing was removed in these New Orleans Clubs but with its furious movements of the hips and pelvis, belly dancing was meant to induce pleasure of a sexual nature and became extremely popular in the New Orleans Nightlife Scene. During this time, erotic dancing was also common in the temples of India in the form of sacred rituals. Male and Female Strippers in New Orleans are hired for private events such as New Orleans bachelor and New Orleans bachelorette parties and also work at Strip Clubs in New Orleans.
It’s certainly your classiest option for a New Orleans bachelor party, with VIP packages starting at $350. New Orleans is, across the nation, an infamous location for tourists and lovers of a good night out on the town. Some tourists may venture to New Orleans for the Creole, Southern, and even international cuisine in the city and others travel here for an upcoming bachelor party with some old-time friends. One thing New Orleans is sure to deliver in spades is a wide selection of gentlemen’s clubs. The quality drinks and the professional dancers at these clubs will certainly keep your night eventful.
I don’t think anyone should cancel options out,” said Kasey Rich from Houston. Dancer Reese Piper said the closures, explained by authorities as a way to blunt illegal sex work, may have the unintentional consequence of forcing strippers into the trade after losing out on revenue. Prosecutors accused Adam Littleton, 25, of “roughing up” Wright and forcing her into his car during the early morning hours of June 10, 2015, after she finished a shift dancing at the Bourbon Street strip club Stiletto’s to take her back to Texas against her will.
Disney Cruise Line encroaches, with a new port-of-call set to open in the French Quarter in 2020. Lawyer Scott Bergthold arrived with a plan to rid the city of strip clubs. Other live entertainment venues are also at risk of being shut down. Add in rising rents and an embattled job market, and many of these workers — musicians, strippers, bartenders, waiters — feel that they are effectively being zoned and regulated out of the city. On August 22, the city council will debate and vote on yet another measure, about restricting live entertainment venues, that concerns advocates for the city’s longtime cultural producers.
Strip clubs have long been a fixture of Bourbon Street, where marquees promise everything from “barely legal” dancers to transvestite divas. Photos of the seedy shows inside the clubs line the windows, next to scores of bars in the district, which draws tourists from around the globe. Erotic dancers and strippers are entertaining crowds of police, firefighters and military personnel instead of the usual audiences of drunken conventioneers and tourists in Bourbon Street’s Déjà Vu club, which reopened this week. Urban studies scholar Moriah McGrath has studied Portland, Oregon, a city where strip clubs can exist pretty much anywhere. She wanted to know how the clubs get along with their neighbors and how, if at all, these locations affect conditions for workers.
On Monday, the ATC and NOPD stood behind the club raids, calling them the “first step, but certainly not the last” in the two organization’s continued anti-trafficking initiatives, the Gambit reports. The ATC and NOPD did not immediately respond to requests for further comment from Broadly. In late-January, raids conducted by the Louisiana state Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC) and New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) resulted in the liquor license suspension and subsequent indefinite closure of eight clubs, the New Orleans Advocate reports. In response, strippers and their allies organized a wild, beautiful action. Fifteen feet above their heads, a dancer is holding herself up with crossed legs. Her dimples are highlighted by the blue light as she heckles a table, a group of 20-somethings in floral print button-downs, rolled up at the sleeves.
While others may not recognize strippers’ self-worth, strippers certainly know their own. The strippers began protesting in the French Quarter preaching “Hands off our jobs! ” and “We are not victims.” While law enforcement reiterated that the raids were aimed at trying to protect both the women’s and the city’s safety, the strip club workers viewed this action in another light. They saw these raids as a blatant attack on their profession and an addition to the existing stigma surrounding it. If you’ve ever been to a strip club you’ve probably already learned this or you were asked to leave the club.
Those were the clubs that were raided, and where liquor licenses were pulled for allegations of soliciting prostitution and drugs. In sex work, women had managed to carve out a place of tenuous economic autonomy when there were few other avenues to access a living wage. The death of Storyville caused a chill in New Orleans’ sex industry. All the vice — the bars, the dancing, the entertainment — landed scattershot around the city. “Basically everyone has a bit of an ax to grind with it,” Archer said. Changes could include limiting formerly incarcerated people from applying for ABO permits.
In reality, the Loyola study never connects strip clubs to human trafficking. New Orleans strip club workers marched this week on Bourbon Street to protest police shutting down some of the clubs. Officials say the operation was intended to root out human trafficking.
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